Man to Man

Haters stay down! This drama was a delight to watch. I laughed so much cause the humor was too good. I had to go back and watch things one more time cause the action or acting was so beautiful I could not help it. The direction was pure perfection they crafted the roles to have such good balance between the humor and the action and the cinematography. Trust me it was such a good watch after a long time of very similar story line Korean drama's. I would anyday recommend this series.

I actually like the action part of this show more than the "romantic" aspect of it. I found the girl to be a bit annoying. With all the far more beautiful women that kept popping up on the show, I would have expected the lead woman to at least be more interesting and likable. She had high expectations of a guy who she really was only "dating" for two days. After finding out he was a special agent and using her, she expected everything to be back to normal afterward and didn't understand why he "left". There were just certain aspects of her character that just made cringe a little. I hope he runs off and leaves her at the end because she really is dragging down the show. I'm only on the tenth episode and getting close to my breaking point because of her character. I just don't see the chemistry between the two of them. Ick... Although, I'm continuing to watch the show because of the action and the bromance between the two guys. It's kinda cute...

The first few episodes may seem odd to other people but overall it's really good. I really enjoyed watching this.Every episode gets better and better. I consider it as one of the best TV series I've seen. Few people didn't liked it, maybe it's just really because people have different taste.

The best aspect of this show, IMO, is the on-screen chemistry between Park Hae-Jin & Park Sung-woong. The latter, especially, since I'm so used to watching Him in a role as "the Big Baddie"... and clearly Someone in Movie-world agreed, as these two Gentleman go on to co-star in The Killing Vote a handful of years later.

Now for the critique: The Storytelling - while having great potential - was totally bogged down with Too Many Details. I counted no less than 4 different Storylines, loosely connected by some "artifacts mission" which I still - now at episode 8 - am fuzzy on. Also, there are Too Many Bad Guys, which prevents My brain from channeling My hate towards one specific character - "when everybody's a Bad Guy, nobody's a Bad Guy" - which works against My Own engagement in the Story, as a Viewer. Finally: WTF with Do-ha's hair?!? It makes Her look like a 14-yr old, which does Kim Min-jung a disservice... I have a hard time believing Seol-woo truly 'falls in love' with Her, since He/the character is too internal with His own feelings & motivations. *More 'inside-his-head verbal chatter as He takes external/visible actions' would have helped overcome this barrier*

Lastly - and I found this to be the most triggering for Me personally - making Seol-woo verbally cut Do-ha down in terms of Her personality, characteristics, and identity when He was advancing His Own agenda was a sh#tty way to do it. I'm guessing whoever wrote these scenes figured, "it's okay - Seol-woo is a Hot Guy, so He can get away with it..." Uh, No. NO!! This is a terrible Seed to Plant for the Audience, and it perpetuates this same bad behavior to be reproduced/copied/mimicked out here in the Real World - particularly with Viewers that identify personally with Seol-woo in this Story. So, IMO? A total Rookie mistake with this writing choice.

Despite these wrinkles - and not being one to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" - Imma keep watching through to the final episode. Cheers!

The benchmark for Korean & Chinese top rank film & TV seems unjustifiably skewed higher in nearly all reviews by those outside the culture. Characters & actors & scripts are nitpicked to a degree that U.S. productions aren't, and ignorant cultural biases are applied to character motivation that demonstrate total lack of awareness of difference in cultural mores. The very high level of self-parody done well that is lauded to the hilt in western efforts like the TV series Chuck is derided unappreciatively as shallow simpering, career trademark of Jim Carrey. Most of all, the production quality, in particular the substantially superior picture resolution & camera work, gets no mention. Again & again, I've been left agape at the beauty of just the picture or scene setting or camera staging in Chinese & Korean production that is so evidently a quantum level above even the best of what I see come out of Hollywood. Much of that seems to utilize the 16:9 aspect ratio with a panoramic sensibility missing altogether in western cinema weaned on the 4:3 TV screen so cripplingly dependent on the close-up of faces. Although I have only watched the first episode so far, I hesitate to binge watch this excellent series because just the one episode was so full of skilled nuance both visually & dramatically. K-drama is often derided as overly melodramatic, and I suspect the many lesser productions I never saw that constitute by far the bulk of the genre are such. But that has made the best of it, such as this show, all the more poignant as a result of its makers being well practiced in conveying passion on the screen.